Part 3: Happily Ever After

School on Monday was something of a hectic affair. We had a pep rally for some dance or other (or maybe it was for the sports teams… I didn’t really pay attention), and none of the teachers knew the schedule, so we were forever being shepherded in and out of classrooms until we all wanted to kill something. I, who had to deal not only with the screwed up schedule but also with my newfound knowledge of my own emotions, was ready to go in there with the machine gun. Thankfully, during lunch, I volunteered to help my English teacher, and I pounded my frustration out as I stapled countless sheets of paper together. Stapling is a little known form of stress relief, but it really does work. Unfortunately, I couldn’t take my anger out on the stapler for nearly long enough, and when the bell rang for the end of the period, I was almost ready to call in sick. After all, I had art next, and sitting next to Eric was really more than I could handle at this point. But I’m actually a decent student, and Mr. Clark likes me, and running away would be a coward’s reaction, and… before I knew it, I was sliding into my seat in the classroom. I sighed.

“Hard day?” Tina asked sympathetically.

“About to get worse,” I muttered.

“Jealous?” she teased, as Eric walked shyly up to his seat.

I snorted. “In your dreams. No, I get to go home and do homework and do my best not to get kicked out.”

Tina blinked. “What?”

“Never mind,” I muttered as Mr. Clark turned his glare on me. I like Mr. Clark a lot, and he likes me too, but we tend to get on each others’ nerves.

The bell clanged, and Kiki walked in. Mr. Clark whirled away from me and turned to confront her. He doesn’t believe in yelling at students in public, but from Kiki’s increasingly bored expression, I could guess that he was chewing her out pretty badly. Kiki’s eyes met mine, and her face lit up in a wicked grin as she took in my seating partner. I glared at her and did my best to scoot away without being obvious about it. On her way to her own seat, she hissed, “Now’s your chance.”

“Fuck off,” I hissed back, earning yet another glare, this time from Tina, who doesn’t believe in swearing unless absolutely necessary. Eric only looked away, biting his lip. I sighed, trying not to feel guilty. It was hard.

We managed not to speak to each other for half the period, but it wasn’t easy. Finally, as I intercepted his stare yet again, I cracked. I leaned towards him. “I don’t hate you, you know.”

He blinked, obviously amazed that I’d decided to talk to him now. “What?” he managed.

“I don’t hate you,” I repeated. “But…” I took a deep breath, trying to figure out how to say this. Finally, I sighed. “Look. I’m not an idiot, okay? I’ve seen how you look at me, and, well, you’re wasting your time. I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, but that’s how it is.”

His eyes had been widening as I spoke, and, by the time I was done, his face was beet red and he wasn’t looking at me.

“Sorry about this,” I muttered, backing away to work on my drawing.

“Wait,” he said softly. I froze.

“Yes?”

“Do you… I mean… do you like anyone else?”

My face turned as red as his. Honesty, I told myself. But this was going to be awkward. Er.

“You don’t have to tell me,” he said hurriedly, still not looking at me. “It’s none of my business.”

I suddenly remembered that he thought I was in love with Dom. There, at least, I could help him out. “Yeah, I do. Your sister.”

He stared at me, his face blank with shock. “What?”

I shrugged. “Not my fault.”

“So…” he trailed off, his face a mask of helpless confusion.

I sighed. “I don’t know how to put this any other way, okay?”

He nodded.

“I’m not gay. Sorry.”

“Oh.” His blush had faded, and now he refused even to meet my eyes. “I… I didn’t realize.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I’m the one who should be sorry. It isn’t your fault either.”

I nodded, wondering if it was even possible for this to get any awkwarder. It was.

“So, um, can I ask you a question?”

I nodded again.

“Who was the guy I saw you with?” Was it just my imagination, or did his voice hold more than a little suspicion?

“My best friend.” Great. Now I sounded cold and distant again. “Dom.”

“Oh.”

Mr. Clark started over towards us, and I ducked my head again, focusing on the picture I’d barely touched. I wished now I’d picked a gemstone other than opal. They were gorgeous to look at, but they were pretty darn hard to draw properly. Mr. Clark glanced at my picture, then raises his eyebrow.

“You need to mix your colors better, Adarius.”

I nodded. “I know. I’m sorry.”

He glanced at me. “Is something wrong?”

I shook my head. “No. Just tired.”

His eyes bored into mine, and I summoned all my strength to hold his gaze, praying that nothing in my face betrayed me. Apparently nothing did, because he nodded and moved on. I breathed a small sigh of relief, turning back to my picture. I had no desire to work on my opal, and I doubted that I would make any progress on it anyway. With a sigh, I filed it back into my binder and flipped to a blank page in my sketchbook. After checking to make sure that Mr. Clark wasn’t looking, I drew my knees up – no mean feat, considering that we were in the desks with chairs attached – and balanced my sketchpad precariously just below them. I closed my eyes momentarily, hoping that I wouldn’t draw anything inappropriate for school, and put the tip of my pencil to the paper, willing the muses just to take me over and direct my hand.

I wasn’t at all sure how long I drew, though I know it didn’t take me all period, because people weren’t packing up when I came back to reality. A goodish chunk of time had obviously passed, though, and I was willing to bet that my… absence had been noticed.

Sure enough, Eric was frowning at me. When he saw that I could hear him again, he murmured, “Are you all right?”

I shrugged. “I will be.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’ve had a generally crappy couple weeks, and nothing appears to be about to improve in the near future.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

I waved this away. “Not your fault. I suppose it was only a matter of time, anyway.”

He frowned. “Excuse me?”

I sighed. “Never mind. It’s not your problem.”

“Oh.”

We worked in silence for a little while longer, him on his gemstone, me on my brain dump. I wasn’t at all sure what it was yet, but it didn’t really matter. I would figure it out eventually.

By the time the bell rang, I’d discovered that I had drawn another landscape. I sighed. My subconscious seems to be inordinately fond of them, and I have no idea why. This one, contrarily to the previous one, was not quite barren, though it was close. A few dots of color marched across the rocky terrain, giving it the illusion of being almost inhabited. I sighed as I saw it. Was I never capable of drawing anything normal? Everything I produced lately seemed to be barren and deeply symbolic of inner torture and whatnot. I was getting rather tired of it. Was there nothing wrong with gems or still lives, for once?

I put my stuff away and stood, leaving my chair standing haphazardly in the middle of the floor. Kiki, her neon-colored head clearly visible even in the art room, walked over to me and propped her hands on her hips. Too tired to play her guessing games, I ignored her and headed towards the door. She kept pace easily, her amusement growing with every step. Finally, as we left the classroom and turned towards the science hallway, I gave up.

“What is it?” I demanded, not really wanting to know.

She knew that I didn’t want to know, and she clearly didn’t care. “I saw you were talking with him,” she said, her grin bordering dangerously on a smirk. “Did you resolve your… ahem… differences?”

I glowered at her. “Kiki, you are walking a very dangerous line,” I growled. “I don’t really care about the consequences: if you don’t drop this, I will kill you and I will laugh as you die. Understand?”

She raised an eyebrow, died the same color as her hair, unfazed by my threats. “Does that mean you still aren’t getting along?”

“It means that it’s my business, not yours, and that I have no desire to talk about it to anyone, most certainly not you.”

She shrugged, apparently accepting it. My eyes narrowed; it’s not like her to give up this easily.

“What?” I asked suspiciously.

“Nothing,” she answered breezily. “You don’t want to talk about it, remember? Now, you are going to be late unless you book it. Go and rescue your Cheerleader in distress from the horrors of magnesium.”

I snorted, but she had a point. Still slightly suspicious but unwilling to press the matter further, I headed towards chemistry, arriving just as the bell rang.

“Where were you?” Bubble demanded as I dropped my books on the desk.

“Kiki,” I answered briefly. “I am going to kill her if she does what I think she’s going to do.”

“What do you think she’s going to do?”

“I think she’s going to worm her way into Eric’s good graces and use whatever she learns to blackmail me.”

Bubble blinked. “What?”

I shook my head wearily. “Never mind. Did I miss anything?”

She shook her head. “Ms. Randall isn’t even here yet.”

“Good.” I glanced at the board, noting that she hadn’t even come in to write the agenda. I frowned. Ms. Randall was usually anally organized and on time. It wasn’t like her to be late.

“Do you know if anything’s happening?” I muttered to Bubble, watching as the other kids asked basically the same question.

She shook her head. “No clue. If she doesn’t come, can we leave? I want to go to the library.”

I stared at her, certain I’d heard wrong. “You want to go to the library?!” I demanded. “Are you all right?”

She grinned. “I need a computer.”

“Why?”

“Max said he’d be on IM all day today.”

I groaned. Max is Bubble’s online boyfriend wannabe. They met over AIM last year, and it’s completely obvious that he’s completely head over heels for her. As far as I know she doesn’t return the feelings, but who knows? Bubble doesn’t need to like a guy to go out with him, she just needs to have enough motivation. I suppose the disappointment of finding out that Eric was gay counted.

“If she’s not here in fifteen minutes, we can go.” I swiveled around to see Danica, one of the bonafide cheerleader/Prom Queens of the school. She doesn’t tend to talk to us, though I know for a fact that she too has a crush on me. I shoved the thought away. It didn’t really matter. She would find someone of her own soon enough.

“Is that an actual rule?” I asked. “I thought it was just a student rumor.”

She shrugged. “They can’t leave us here without supervision, can they?” she asked practically. “I’m fairly certain that’s against district rules.”

“Good point,” I agreed, stealing a look at Bubble, who’d tuned out of the conversation and was distracting herself by staring at the chinchilla our teacher keeps in her room, called, for reasons I do not seek to understand, Buzz. I looked back up at the clock on the wall. “Twelve minutes to go.”

Danica nodded, leaning back in her chair. She didn’t speak any more, for which I was grateful, only took out a tube of lip gloss and a mirror and began conspicuously applying it to her lips. I just as conspicuously ignored her. The less attention to her I pay the better as far as I’m concerned.

Minutes ticked by as we waited, the volume level of the class gradually growing until it hit a point somewhere beyond deafening. Finally, just as some of the boys decided to start hurling various inanimate objects at each other, our assistant principle, Mr. Davidson, burst through the door. He skidded to a halt, took one look at the chaos that had once been our classroom, and stuck his fingers in his mouth. Two seconds later, an ear piercing whistle echoed through the room, quieting even the most rambunctious of the boys.

“Your teacher has had an accident,” he informed us. “She slipped in the parking lot and injured her head. She’s at the hospital now, and, no, she’s not in any danger of dying.” Most of the girls looked relieved at this, while more than a few of the boys sighed with disappointment. Mr. Davidson glowered at them, and they subsided. “You will have a substitute next class. For today, you are dismissed. Any homework you may have had can be turned in next class.”

After a moment of shocked silence, noise erupted once more. People milled around, gathering their things, many of which were now strewn around the room, courtesy of the impromptu game of catch that had just ended.

“C’mon Bubble,” I said, reaching out and snagging her arm. “You can talk to your Prince Charming after all.”

She grinned and grabbed her stack of books, doubling back moments later to grab her purse, which she’d left lying on the chair.

We made our way out of the room, Bubble darting out in front of me in her eagerness, and I rolled my eyes. We made our way to the library, where Bubble snatched a computer from under the nose of another kid. The girl looked surprised, then annoyed, and stalked off in a huff. I grinned slightly and grabbed the computer next to Bubble as the boy using it logged out.

As she logged onto AIM, miraculously still not banned by the firewall, I turned to my own desktop, my grin widening as the picture of Amy Lee I have as my background popped up. Amy Lee is one hot chick, and she can sing. What more can you want? An image of Adele flashed through my brain, and I winced. That wasn’t what I meant. Unfortunately, my subconscious really doesn’t care, and continued to subject me to tantalizing glimpses of the girl who hated me. I pulled out my iPod.

“What are you doing here?”

I spun to see Kiki. I wasn’t sure if she really was off or if she’d decided to ditch, but it didn’t really matter. This was Kiki, after all.

“Hello to you too,” I agreed pointedly. “Class was canceled.”

She raised her eyebrows, whistling softly. “She die?”

“Not quite.”

“What happened?”

It took several minutes to recount the gory details in as much detail as Kiki insisted, and, when I’d finally satisfied her, she leaned back, a grin on her face.

“She deserved that.”

“Kiki!!”

“What? She did.”

“That’s beside the point,” I snapped. “You’re just as bad as all the others.”

She snorted. “Hardly. I’m much worse than any high school boy could hope to be.” The way she said it implied the deepest disgust for my entire gender, something I couldn’t help resenting slightly.

“I’m a boy, remember?”

“Hard to forget, isn’t it?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Half the girls in the school want to fuck you, and the other half hate you.”

“So nice to be loved.”

“Oh, you know it is.”

She reached behind her and pulled up the chair that had somehow miraculously ended up just within reach. To my relief, she turned her attention to Bubble, leaving me to check my email in peace.

The only thing in my inbox was a letter from my mother, which I opened with no little trepidation. Mom doesn’t write to me unless there’s a problem, and it’s never a simple one. I clicked on the message.

From:

To:

Subject: Quick Question

Hey Adarius. It’s me, mom. I just have a quick question for you. Do you know where I could find our medical documents? The doctors want to check something, and I have no idea where on earth they could be. You don’t have them, do you?

Let me know asap.

Mom

I reread the message again, then slowly closed out of it, fighting the twin urges to either shout at the top of my lungs or dissolve into tears. Neither would be useful at the present time.

“What’s up?” Kiki demanded, presumably in response to my wooden expression.

I shook my head. “Nothing.” It sounded fake even to me. She didn’t buy it for a second.

“Rathburn,” she said warningly.

“Look. My mom’s having issues and I have to get her out of them. See you guys later.” I logged out and stood, not waiting for the logging off to finish completely. Slinging my backpack over my shoulders, I headed towards the lobby, not really thinking about where I would go. There was only one place I could go, after all. Dad had to know that mom was in the hospital again. Whether for the cancer or the drugs, I didn’t know, but the only conceivable reason she could want my medical documents or, more to the point, hers, was that she’d been hospitalized yet again. I didn’t even try to figure out how many times it had been. She’s been in and out for about as long as I can remember.

“Where are you going?”

I recognized Minnie without making a fool of myself, and I dared to hope that she wouldn’t be able to pop out of nowhere anymore.

“Kiki called you?” It would be too much to hope that Kiki’d kept silent. She might be an annoying bitch most of the time, but she worries about me as much as the rest of them do. I wondered briefly if they had meetings to talk about me while I wasn’t there, then shoved the thought out of my brain. They were my friends, and they were worried. The least I could do was get them to worry less.

“Of course she did. What’s going on?”

“My mom’s in the hospital again.”

“Oh.” I couldn’t help feeling relieved that it had been Minnie that Kiki called, and not Joe. Minnie’s known me since I was seven years old, and she knows my family issues almost as well as I do. “What can you do?”

“She wants her medical documents, and Dad should know.”

Minnie frowned. “Wait, you’re going back to your house?”

“Don’t have much choice, do I? He has to know.”

“What about Marge?”

I sighed. I’d been trying not to think about my evil stepmother. “I can only hope she’ll still be at work.”

“Do you have your phone?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Keep it on. I’ll keep mine on too. You will call me if there is a problem, understand?”

“Yes mother,” I muttered, but I pulled out my phone anyway and turned it on. I showed it to her before shoving it back into my pocket. “Satisfied?”

“No,” she said bluntly. “But you won’t let me go with you, so I won’t even bother asking.”

“Good plan,” I agreed. “Because the answer would be no.”

“I know that,” she assured me. “You’re going now?”

“No point putting it off.”

She sighed, slumping slightly. Then she straightened. “Walk fast. It looks like it might rain.”

It did rain, and I was soaked to the skin by the time I got to my house. I stood uncertainly on the doorstep for a moment, water dripping from my hair and my clothes, wondering if I should knock. It felt exceedingly odd knocking at my own door, but I did it anyway. No point in barging in unwanted. This conversation would be hard enough anyway.

Luck was, for once, with me, and it was Dad, not Marge, who opened the door. He blinked in surprise as he saw me. “Adarius! What are you doing here?”

It seemed patently unfair that my own father asked that question, but I shoved the unfairness away. It was, after all, a perfectly legitimate question and, considering the circumstances, an understandable one.

“I need to talk to you. It’s about Mom.”

He winced slightly. “Come in. It’s too windy to hold the door open like this.”

I came in, ignoring the water pooling on the floor. Marge would have a fit when she came home, but I was past caring what she thought. Dad led me into the kitchen, where I could drip without injuring the floor, and nodded for me to sit. I did.

“So what’s happening with your mother?”

I summed up the situation in as few words as possible, but they were still too many. His face closed as I spoke, and, when he answered, his words contained no little poison.

“What does she expect me to do about it?”

I grimaced. My parents didn’t have a particularly happy divorce, and it spoke volumes about their feelings for each other that she’d asked me for the documents. Any rational parent would have asked a capable adult, not a teenager. Of course, Mom could never be described as rational, but even so… I don’t think my parents have exchanged a civil word to each other in ten years. They’ve been divorced for three years already, and that was how long it took to settle all the court things and custody battles. After they signed the documents, I don’t believe they’d ever even been in the same room together for more than two minutes at a time.

“Well, where are the medical documents, for starters?”

“In the drawer, with all the other papers. But I don’t know why she would expect me to have hers.”

“You don’t. I do.”

He blinked, then frowned. “What?”

“She sent them to me last summer after coming out of the hospital. I just want mine.”

“You’re going to see her, then?”

I sighed, closing my eyes momentarily. “I have to.”

He didn’t answer for a long moment, and I almost thought he would forbid me to go. Not that it would stop me, but it would certainly make my life even harder than it already was. Finally, he sighed. “I suppose I can’t stop you. I’ll go get your papers.”

I grinned. “Thanks Dad.”

He left, presumably to get my medical documents, and I walked slowly to my room. Once inside, I closed the door, looking around at what had been my room until last week. I supposed it wasn’t mine anymore, though it was hard to think of it as anything else.

Finally, I reached into my desk and opened one of the drawers. Sure enough, Mom’s medical documents came readily to my hand. I closed the drawer and then, at the last minute, locked my desk. I’d been too distraught to do it last time, but there were things in there I really didn’t want Marge to find. Come to think of it, I wouldn’t be particularly pleased if Dad found them either. It’s not that I hide anything illegal or anything – I don’t do drugs, and Kiki keeps hers out of my house – but things like my journal or my sketchpad are best kept to myself. I doubt my father would be impressed by temper tantrums, nor overly pleased by past suicidal crisis’s, either mine or my friends’.

My luck held until I’d almost left the house. I’d pretty much stopped dripping by then, and I was crossing the living room to leave when the door burst open. I froze, Mom’s and my papers clutched in my hand ready shove into my pocket, my jacket half on. Marge too stopped, and her eyes narrowed into slits of brutal hatred.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, taking a step forward. Unconsciously, I stepped back.

“I came to get some things.”

“You weren’t to set foot in my house ever again,” she snarled, advancing more.

I’m still not sure what part of that caused me to snap, though it was probably her saying that it was her house. It wasn’t. It was Dad’s house, and it was mine, and it had once been Mom’s, but it had never been Marge’s. She was a visitor, nothing more.

“Why don’t you just leave me alone?” I demanded, halting my retreat mid-step. “I know you hate me and you know you hate me, so why don’t you just fucking give up already? It’s my house and I’ll live in it however long I damn well want to!”

Her face was rapidly turning a shade of red as yet unfound in nature, but I ignored the danger signs, as well as the voice in my head, which was yelling words as obscene as the ones I’d thrown at Marge, instructing me to get the hell out of there. I didn’t care.

“You know why you hate me? You hate me because you’re jealous. You’re jealous of me because I’m prettier than you are and because Dad loves me more than he loves you and you know it. You know it and that scares you and you take your anger out on me. You think I don’t see through you? You think I don’t know how much I scare you because I’m prettier than you are and you feel threatened by that? Well, you should feel threatened. I would love to knock you from your gilded palace and stamp on you until you can’t fucking feel anything but pain.”

I stopped, only then aware of the dead silence in the room. Only my breathing, heavy from adrenaline, or effort, or both, penetrated the calm. Her face was still fire-colored, her eyes still blazing, her hands clenched at her sides, groceries forgotten. And then she moved, and everything snapped back to reality.

“You brat!” she screamed, lashing out. I realized that she’d snapped too. She was going to do it. She was actually going to do it. She was going to hit me.

She hit me. There was an incredible amount of force behind it, presumably fueled by her utter loathing of me and everything to do with me. She came at me again and again and again, losing all vestiges of her always tenuous control. As my vision began to swim, I couldn’t help thinking that I didn’t regret any of it. Then she hit me one last time and everything went white.

“Rathburn, will you wake up?!”

The nameless voice penetrated my consciousness – or maybe my unconsciousness, since I appeared to asleep – nagging at my mind, unwilling to be quenched. I winced. I wanted the voice to go away. It was dragging me up, up out of the comforting whiteness in which I existed. Dimly, I recalled that I hadn’t always existed in this whiteness, but the memories of the time before were fuzzy, as though they’d been taken long ago and were blurred with age and distance. I got the impression that they hadn’t been particularly fun memories, and that made me all the more eager not to leave the whiteness.

“He should have been awake hours ago! What’s wrong?”

Another voice, equally nameless, yet clearly worried. I felt a slight pang as I heard that one, and I remembered that I didn’t want that person to be worried. Maybe I would think about leaving, difficult as it was to contemplate.

“She hit him pretty hard. Maybe…”

Yet a third, this one male. The other two had been sexless, and the identification of gender told me that I was definitely on my way towards wakefulness, whether I wanted to be or not.

“No!” The second voice again. A girl, I decided. “No, he will wake up! Don’t say things like that, Dom!”

Dom. I knew that name. The memories were coming back, coming faster and faster the closer I got to complete consciousness. Dom was my best friend. He was my age. I’d known him forever. He was in love with… with who? The name escaped me suddenly.

“I think he’s coming to!”

Another male voice, and the name I’d been searching for sprang to my mind and my lips. “Eric.”

“Rathburn!” That was Minnie, the second voice. Her tone had changed from worried to overjoyed and, as my vision adjusted, I saw that she was sitting right next to me, her chair pulled up as close as it could go without being physically on the bed. “You’re awake!”

“Apparently.” My voice sounded odd to my own ears, like I hadn’t used it in a while. “What happened.”

Minnie frowned. “Don’t you remember? Marge hit you.”

“Your Dad’s divorcing her, by the way,” Dom added, coming into view above me. “About time, I think.”

“My Mom? Did she…?” I stopped as I saw Minnie’s face. “Is she okay?”

“She didn’t make it.” Kiki, my first voice. Of course it would be her. Only Kiki had the ability to say something like that is that tone of voice, completely devoid of any pity or other emotions. Someone who didn’t know her as well as I do might think she didn’t care. I knew she was just pretending.

“How?”

“Overdose. They said it was accidental.”

I nodded, knowing as well as they did that it hadn’t been. My mom hadn’t been the type to accidentally do something like that.

“How long was I out?”

“A day and a half,” Minnie told me. “They were just about to try and force you to wake up.”

I winced. “How long have you been here?” She looked like she hadn’t slept for the entire time, and, knowing Minnie, she hadn’t.

“She wouldn’t leave,” Dom announced, giving truth to my suspicions. “Not even when they tried to make her.”

I turned my head to scowl at my friend. “Sleep,” I ordered her. “I’m awake and I’m alive. You don’t need to end up hospitalizing yourself too. We all have more than enough to deal with already.”

“But…”

“No buts,” I said firmly. “Sleep.”

She subsided, and I suspected she was far more tired than she let on. Minnie never gave in that easily.

The nurse came in then to usher them all out, and they promised to visit me again soon. I waved goodbye, secretly relived. I needed time to sort my feelings out, and that works better when you’re alone. Of course, I wasn’t sure I wanted to sort my feelings out, but I knew both Minnie and Dom would be watching me like hawks when they came back, and I needed to be able to present them with clear, rational arguments as to why they should just leave me alone and let me cope. I wasn’t having very much success with that part.

They came again, as I’d known they would, and, since they didn’t stay and pester me, I imagined my mask was good enough. Or, if it wasn’t, they didn’t say anything about it. Maybe they had – finally – learned how not to pry.

I was let out of the hospital two days later, after being pronounced fine except for some bruises. Dad arrived to usher me back to our house, after informing me that he was divorcing Marge and that I never needed to listen to her again. I didn’t tell him that I wouldn’t have anyway. Her reign of terror over me was finished, and I’d decided that I’d never take shit from her, or anyone, again. I could only hope that people understood that.

I remained in a fairly numb state for much of the next week, despite the worried prodding of my friends and, later, my schoolmates, who were apparently under the impression that I’d fallen down some stairs. I guess being beat up by your stepmother isn’t really something you want to advertize. Or, at least, not something I want to advertize, and the school administration knew that. I was called into the councilor’s office the day after I returned to school, and asked if there was anything I wanted to talk about, but I declined, informing them that my dad was divorcing Marge and that it was all good. Well, maybe not in so many words, but I managed to convey the sentiment. They didn’t call me back.

Gradually, I started talking to people again, mostly to avoid a repeat of the above summons, and I surprised myself by actually growing to like several people I’d never given a second thought to. In my efforts to appear “normal” in front of Minnie and Kiki, I found myself talking to other people, sometimes boys, mostly girls, who expressed sympathy and offered their friendship. I’d never realized before how many nice people there were in the school, and I saw with chagrin that our group had always been an incredibly exclusive one. Not that it was really all our fault. There was no denying that few people had approached us and asked to be included, Joe being a noteworthy exception. Even so, we could have made an effort.

Much to my delight, Adele seemed to have lost her frosty attitude, and we began talking in the halls or the library during passing periods and after school. I discovered that we actually had a lot in common with each other, and, the more we talked, the more I fell for her. To her credit, she didn’t seem either to notice or to mock me for it, though I supposed Eric had told her the entire story. I’d known he would even as I told him, even if it was only subconsciously.

Even this was not enough to satisfy Dom, though, and, in an effort to stop him from barging in and demanding I talk to him, I introduced him to Eric. The second I saw them together, I knew that Dom wouldn’t be prying into my life any time soon. I insisted that I was not jealous as I saw them talk together, and I almost believed it. Apparently my skills of self-deception were growing.

She came over to me the next day, a slight smile on her face. “Thank you.”

“What for?”

She sighed. “You know! For introducing my brother to your friend. Though you really didn’t do me any favors, since that’s all he’s going to be able to talk about for a while.”

I laughed. “Yeah. Dom too.”

She nodded. “I suppose so.” She hesitated, and my breath caught very slightly. “Adarius?”

“Yes?”

“Can I talk to you?”

“We are talking, aren’t we?”

She scowled. “That’s not what I meant,” she snapped. “I meant can we talk in private?”

With great difficulty, I stopped myself from treating her to a highly cynical comment, and shrugged. “Sure. Where do you want to go?”

She frowned, biting her lip. Only then did I realize how nervous she was, and I could have kicked myself for not taking her seriously sooner. What kind of person was I?

“We can go out behind the school,” I suggested. “No one’ll be there at this hour.”

She frowned. “Northside? Isn’t that where all the smokers and druggies go?”

I shrugged. “Depends on the time of day.” I glanced at my watch. 2:30. “They should be gone by now. They don’t tend to hang around when they can help it.”

She shot me a sharp glance. “And how do you know so much about this, may I ask?”

I grinned. “You haven’t met Kiki, have you?”

“No.”

“Then you have no idea. Remind me to introduce you to her some day. She’s the one with blue hair.”

“Oh, her. You’re friends with her?”

I frowned, instantly on the defensive. “Kiki’s cool. She might not make the same decisions you would, but she’s a good friend.”

“If you say so,” she muttered skeptically. “Let’s go.”

We left the main hall, slipping around back. She eyed the long grass with distaste, but waded through it without comment. Only when we’d made it around to Northside did she yank the clinging tendrils off her jeans. “Have these people never heard of a lawnmower?”

I snorted. “Oh, sure. Just not back here. No one cares about back here.”

“What about people who come here on a regular basis?”

“They don’t care either. Besides, part of the appeal is the inaccessibility.”

“Oh.”

We sat it silence for a while, then I looked at her. “You, um, wanted to say something?”

She nodded, but still said nothing. The silence grew more and more awkward until I would have killed for something, anything, to distract me. With every second, I became more and more aware that she was fidgeting with her rings, that her jeans flared perfectly around her trim ankles, that her long blond hair just barely touched my shoulder… soon I was going to crack and do something I would regret.

Finally, just as I was about to stand up just to relieve tension, she turned to look at me.

“Eric told me… I mean, I made him tell…”

I nodded, taking pity on her. “I know.”

“You do?”

“Well, I assumed he had.”

“Is it… I mean, did you mean it?”

“What, that I like you? Yes.”

She seemed to sag slightly, as though a great weight had been removed from her chest. “Oh. Good.”

“Why?”

“Because…” She paused, swallowed, took a deep breath, and looked me squarely in the eye. “Because I like you too.”

My own breath caught in my throat and for a moment I could do nothing but stare at her. Vaguely, a part of my brain informed me that I should be doing more to mark this historic event. It supplied swoons, kisses, declarations of unending passion… I ignored it all. This was real life, not a fairy tale. I was in High School, not a land far, far away, and that wasn’t how things worked in High School.

Instead, I took her hand. It felt warm in mine, and completely natural. I’d imagined the gesture so many times that there was no real climax in actually carrying it out, just a deep sense of satisfaction, as though a piece of me were finally where it belonged.

“Do you want to go to dinner tomorrow night? My treat.”

She nodded, clearly unable to trust her voice. We stayed like that for another long moment. Finally, she sighed. “I have to go. I’m supposed to be home by 3:30.”

I nodded, and reluctantly let go of her hand. We stood and battled our way back across the sea of razor-sharp vegetation that defended Northside. Just before we got back to the main part of the school, she paused, then leaned over and kissed me, gently and briefly, hardly touching me at all, yet leaving me with a sense of all-consuming peace that had no comparison. Then she darted away, leaving me to follow at my own pace, marveling at the world and at my own fortune.

So there’s my story. Adele and I went out for the rest of high school and college, and decided that we wanted no one else. I asked her to marry me when we were Juniors in college, and she accepted, moving in with me at long last. Later the next year, she bore me our first child, a boy we named Devlon, after one of her friends in New York.

Dom and Eric stayed together for the rest of Junior year, then drifted apart. Eric eventually settled down with a nice guy he met in Med School, and Dom continued to float from guy to guy, never finding the perfect one until he met Clarence. The two of them have been inseparable ever since.

My Dad never remarried, living his life in a small condo outside Denver, apparently perfectly content with his life.

Minnie married a guy from Florida and became a successful lawyer, making far more money than I could ever hope to make. We see each other often, and she tells me that she’s jealous of my happy ending. I tell her that she’s insane.

Joe found herself a best friend and part time lover and is still in college, studying Engineering. She too will make one hell of a lot of money some day.

Kiki finally renounced her wicked ways when she graduated, swearing off both drugs and men, living perfectly happily by herself in New York, working as a part time actress and drug councilor.

Bubble finally hooked herself a nice guy, who was neither a football player nor gay and stayed in Denver, majoring in fashion design and gossip... though that last wasn't really part of the curriculum.

On the whole, I think we all found our own happily ever after, don’t you?

The End.

Author's note: So this is the last chapter. Yes, it ends in a cliche. That was the point. Hope you liked it! I may be reworking this into novel form, so stay tuned.
Thanks!
--kyra